Last week, I emphasized the importance of thanking interviewers, and I received a Comment today that I feel merits further discussion. Don't loose sleep over this issue, but here are my thoughts:
Writing thank you notes will not get you into medical school, and choosing not to write them will not keep you out. Writing thank yous isn't about good karma, or paying it forward, or hoping for more points on your interviewers' evaluations. It's simply the right thing to do.
For one thing, you will be a student at one of the schools at which you're interviewing in less than a year (!!). While you may never see your interviewers from the other schools again, your interviewers from the school you will attend are likely to be lecturers, attendings, and even mentors in your very near future. Thanking them is the courteous and professional thing to do. Some of these interviewers may one day be your colleagues.
Additionally, writing thank you notes is also about creating allies who can help you with your decision making process. Come spring, you may be making some difficult decisions, and it's nice to have established rapport with some of the very people who can help clarify questions for you.
Finally, it's just nice. People like nice people, and it's nice to be a nice person. This season, I have received multiple thank you notes, and on every occasion except one, I had already completed my evaluation of the applicant by the time the thank you arrived. But, the fact that they wrote notes to thank me for my time was very meaningful and makes me think highly of applicants I had already decided I really liked.
Certainly, if you have been told not to thank your interviewers (maybe Stanford does this?), it would be inappropriate to do so. (As an aside, learning to properly follow instructions, even silly ones, is an important part of the medical school process. Earlier this year, I had a Residency Program Director tell me that applicants who did not follow the instructions to list prior education in reverse chronological order were not invited for interview regardless of how qualified they were!) However, it's hard for me to imagine a school specifically instructing you not to thank someone. Do you really want to go to that school? And, if your thank you note borders on coercion, I suggest you tone down the language.
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